February 26, 2025

Making data useful

How do we turn messy data into profit?

Making data useful is difficult. The whole point of data engineering/science/analysis/etc is to turn all of the endless piles of information we collect into something that people find valuable. I've spent the better part of the last decade in my career as a software engineer building systems that do this, and I've noticed that it is remarkably difficult to do well. There are many points where the process breaks down, and no silver bullet for fixing them. I've spent a lot of time trying to organize my thoughts on the topic and wrote this down one night: […3 min read]

post#data-engineering#data-science

January 4, 2025

Software engineering is table stakes

I'm going through a course on data engineering on Coursera right now and it's been super interesting. I've been one of those software engineers who works with data for a while now, and while I feel like I have a solid grasp of software engineering, I often feel like I'm fumbling my way through the more data-processing heavy parts of my job. I get that feeling like there must be a better way, but I don't know what it is, so I just put something together based on my paradigm as a software developer, and it often ends up being a sub-optimal solution. […2 min read]

post#best-practices#data-engineering#software-engineering